Playing with Sticks
by Trefoil-underscore
Summary: Steve is insane! He plays with sticks and leaves! Herobrine, however, is completely sane. Absolutely. Stop looking at him like that. Or, that one weird fluff in which Herobrine is in denial about everything.
Herobrine looked around his house. Everything was exploded and smoking weird colors and on fire. He gave up. He summoned a massive fireball and teleported out. There was a faint explosion from behind him, and he sighed. It all started when he decided to attempt scrying, not because he particularly cared about the future or even because he thought it would actually work, but because it was something he hadn't tried before and he was out of bat blood. But he was too lazy to get up and walk to the table with his scrying sticks, so he telekinetically threw them across the room at the table. And missed. Repeatedly. He was bad at telekinesis. After a while he started to lose his temper and his focus, and started throwing things that shouldn't be thrown. Like those fire charges which were apparently still active. And several bottles of what turned out to be mildly explosive potions. Also, he had discovered that certain minerals emitted bizarre toxic smokes in rainbow colors when superheated. How interesting. There was another, louder explosion from behind him. He sighed. He wondered what his idiot brother was up to. Nothing like this, at least. He looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened. A snapping, sparkling mushroom cloud of purple-yellow-green was billowing over the trees, which were turning black. That didn't look good. He teleported away, materializing on the roof of a house in a valley. Steve was farther down the valley, sitting in a small pool beside the stream that flowed down the valley, playing with sticks. Herobrine stared. What on earth? He teleported onto the ground and sneaked up on him. He was in a quiet pool formed by a depression in the rock when the stream overflowed, surrounded by tiny boats made out of leaves, bark, nutshells, anything that would float. He was weaving some sticks together with grass to make a raft. Herobrine stared in disbelief. He was used to Steve acting a little bizarre after he'd driven him insane, but he hadn't dished out any torture, psychological or otherwise, in months. Had he gone permanently insane? Steve set the raft gently on the surface of the water and smiled when it floated perfectly. He stood, walked to the stream and pushed the raft into the current, watching it bob away down the valley. Then he returned to his pool and sat pushing some curled leaves around. Herobrine shook his head. Steve was broken. He took a rock and walked up behind him, his steps making no sound on the smooth stone. Now, which of the annoying little things should he sink first? He scanned the surface of the water, rock in hand. "Really?" said Steve. Herobrine noticed Steve's reflection looking at him. He didn't seem scared, or angry, or anything at all. He looked like a sad child. He's totally lost it. "You have nothing better to do than throw rocks at my floating leaves?" Herobrine didn't think Steve was in a position to question his choice of activities and his face showed it. "Have you looked at your own reflection lately?" Herobrine glanced from Steve's reflection to his own. The first thing he noticed was his eyes, gleaming like stars. He smiled. Then his vision adjusted and the rest of his reflection came into focus. He was thin, and his skin had faded to the color of old parchment. His hair hung in unkempt lumps. Hideous purple bruises patched his pale skin here and there, and the skin around his glowing eyes was almost black. He was hideous. He hissed at Steve and teleported away. Steve just sat there, looking at the water. Did he even care that he was about to die? He'd just snapped, hadn't he? Herobrine teleported back and snapped his neck. He fell forwards into the pool before fading into white smoke. Herobrine kicked at the water, sinking all of the little boats, then walked to Steve's house. He felt like burning something. He would see if Steve's bizarre apathy could survive respawning into flames. If it could, then congratulations, he was completely broken. He walked up to Steve's house and paused, seeing his reflection in a window. He smashed it. He stepped inside and went from room to room methodically smashing all of the windows and any other glass he could find. After a while Steve reappeared. "What are you doing?" he said, looking at him. Just looking, blankly, with those big indigo eyes. Perhaps he'd realized that he never won their fights and given up. Herobrine felt that he should be flattered, but he wasn't. He threw Steve through the remaining window and kicked him around in the glass until he was tired of it, then slashed open a few arteries and left him to bleed to death while he finished trashing the house. He felt a little better by the time he left, although the sun was setting. He decided to walk through the night. This resolution lasted half an hour before an archer pegged him through the back of the skull. It had been a long time since he'd had to respawn, and he'd almost forgotten how terribly painful it was. He'd also forgotten this weird floating feeling—wait, what? He opened his eyes. He was falling through the air into a charred, skeletal forest. Oh right. He burned his house. His bed had been upstairs. He crashed into a pile of smoking rubble and clawed his way out, coughing. The forest was petrified, shedding black ash, for as far as he could see. So that's what happens when you burn magic.

A lot of Steve's windows were on the ground floor, so zombies wandered in after the sun had set. One decided that his bed looked comfy. Either that, or it tripped onto the bed and couldn't get back up. It's hard to tell with zombies. Shortly afterward, Steve respawned on top of it. Dismayed at finding zombie juices all over his clean sheets and hearing the rest of the undead crowd wandering around his house and stepping on the broken glass, Steve jumped out a window and started jogging across the valley. He wasn't going to deal with that right now. He was going to dig a hole in the ground, put a dirt block over his head and wait for morning.

Or he was going to get shot in the back of the head by an archer and respawn back on top of the zombie in his bed.

This time he killed it with a frying pan. He also killed the five other zombies in the house, beat a spider to a pulp, and cooked some bacon. A frying pan is an incredibly useful implement.

 **A/N: It wasn't very clear, but did anyone notice the irony in that Herobrine himself is also "playing with sticks" and manages to explode his entire base while doing it? Steve at least doesn't explode anything.**


End file.
